Suspension Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Wheeling University President Suspended With Pay, No Reason Given

The Wheeling University Board of Trustees announced in an email Tuesday that President Ginny Favede was relieved of all duties, news outlets reported. The statement gave no reason for the suspension and a school spokesperson told The Intelligencer Wheeling News Register that further details about it would not immediately be released.

A private West Virginia university that has struggled financially said it has suspended its president with pay.

Favede became the school’s 13th president when she was named to the position in 2019 amid financial difficulties. In 2021, the school was put on probation after the Higher Learning Commission determined it “does not have sufficient fiscal resources to support is operation,” noting it relies heavily on subsidies from the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston. The probation was lifted last year, but the organization said it would continue to monitor the school due to concerns about finances, staffing and enrollment.

The university said graduate education director Dianna Vargo was named interim chief operations officer and will work with the Board of Trustees to develop a plan to move forward without disruption.

The ‘Toxic Stew’ Of School Discipline

In schools across the nation, when students of color misbehave, they are disciplined at twice the rate of white students. That means Black and brown students are more likely to face suspension or expulsion. West Virginia lawmakers worry students are not facing the right consequences for their misbehavior. A new state law is designed to make schools safer. In this episode, Us & Them host Trey Kay looks at new approaches to school discipline.

Across the nation, students of color and those from poor families are more likely to be suspended from school, and data from West Virginia reflects this national trend.

In fact, research shows when a teacher thinks a student of color is misbehaving on purpose, they’re more likely to get suspended or expelled. Missing just two days of school each month makes a student less likely to graduate, which has a big impact on their prospects for the future.

On this episode of Us & Them, host Trey Kay looks at discipline disparities in our schools – a new West Virginia law designed to get tough on misbehaving students – and the way one alternative Kanawha County school gives students the support to recover.

This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council, the Daywood Foundation and the CRC Foundation.

Subscribe to Us & Them on Apple Podcasts, NPR One, RadioPublic, Spotify, Stitcher and beyond.

Teacher Ash Setterstrom, counselor Billie Walker and principal Wayman Wilson are part of the staff at the Chandler Academy in Charleston, WV. Chandler is for students who’ve been expelled or removed from one of Kanawha County’s eight high schools or 13 middle schools. Chandler’s goal is to get students stabilized and send them back to their home schools, but often that system turns out to be a vicious cycle. Most of the students at Chandler come from low-income families, and about a quarter are Black. Some struggle with mental illness while others have been stigmatized after being expelled from their home school, and almost all of them struggle with low self-esteem. *Credit: Ash Setterstrom*

Ash Setterstrom has taught history at the Chandler Academy in Charleston, WV for six years. She finds it rewarding to work with students who have discipline problems because she was one of them. When she was a student in the Kanawha County School system, she says she hated authority and loved getting suspended. She spent her middle school years — the late 90s — at an alternative learning center like Chandler. *Credit: Ash Setterstrom*

Most of the people who work at the Chandler Academy in Charleston, WV have been there for a long time. They are passionate about what they do. Counselor Billie Walker has been at Chandler for 33 years. *Credit: Ash Setterstrom*

Community members showed up to a school board meeting in St. Paul, MN in February 2023. Many expressed concerns about safety days after a student was stabbed to death in one of the local high schools. *Credit: Matt Sepic/MPR News*

Eric Sloan spoke during a special listening session of a school board meeting in St. Paul, MN in February 2023. The board welcomed speakers to comment on school safety and to share ideas to make St. Paul Public Schools safer after a student was stabbed to death at a local high school days before. *Credit: John Autey/Pioneer Press*

Jayanti Owens is an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management. She’s a sociologist who works on issues of race and inequality in school systems. She works with school districts nationwide on a study to gauge how race affects the response to school behavior.

Schools or districts interested in being involved with the work Dr. Owens is doing to help reduce racial/ethnic disparities in discipline can email to learn more: jayanti.owens@yale.edu

Here’s a link to her study, Double Jeopardy: Teacher Biases, Racialized Organizations, and the Production of Racial/Ethnic Disparities in School Discipline.

*Credit: Jayanti Owens*

Joe Ellington is a delegate from Mercer County, WV and is the current chair of the House Education Committee. In the 2023 session, Ellington co-authored a new state law to make school discipline more rigorous. He’s a practicing obstetrician and gynecologist. *Credit: West Virginia Legislature*

Matthew Watts, senior pastor of Grace Bible Church in Charleston, WV, is a longtime civil rights leader and no stranger to the West Virginia Legislature. He’s fought to close the wealth gap in housing, job training and economic development. He says that he is almost ready to retire, but this issue of school discipline is really important to him and that guilt plays a role. That’s because when he was working with Black kids more than 20 years ago, he did not believe it when they told him their discipline was different than that of white students. In 2015, Rev. Watts and others began paying attention to the reports coming out of academia and the U.S. Department of Education that documented racial disparities in school discipline. For years he tried to get data from West Virginia – and when he finally saw what was going on – he was appalled. *Credit: Trey Kay/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Kanawha County is the largest and most diverse school district in West Virginia. Tom Williams, superintendent of Kanawha County Schools, says the new legislation proposed by Del. Joe Ellington will help teachers teach. Williams is hopeful that the new law will give schools all over West Virginia the guardrails they’ve long needed to provide consistency along with flexibility. *Credit: Kanawha County Schools*

Legislators Hear About Changes To State’s Sports Commission Rules

During their interim meeting at Marshall University Sunday, the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability heard about several changes to rules and regulations governing the Secondary School Activities Commission.

Changes included a significant increase in the number of out-of-season activity days allowed for coaches to work with players, from 12 to 32 days, as well as changes to how suspensions after an ejection from a game are calculated.

Hank Hager, counsel to the Senate Education Committee, explained that suspensions would now be 10 percent of the season, regardless of when the infraction occurs. For sports like baseball and basketball that play the state maximum of 32 games, that would mean a three game suspension.

“I don’t necessarily want to condone the activity that gets somebody suspended, but at the same time I understand there’s emotion involved in sports,” said Sen. Mike Oliverio, R-Monongalia. “That seems excessive to me, three games.”

Cindy Daniel, West Virginia SSAC assistant executive director, pointed out that there is a process in place for schools to appeal suspensions resulting from ejections.

Oliverio suggested that the West Virginia Legislature may change the suspension rule in a future session.

Among the changes are an expansion to student eligibility, including the implementation of recently passed House Bill 2820, which creates a pathway for Hope Scholarship recipients to play SSAC sports.

W.Va. Supreme Court Suspends And Fines Circuit Court Judge

This week, the West Virginia’s Supreme Court of Appeals, in a 56 page document, ruled that a six month suspension, a censure and a $5,000 fine was more appropriate for Williams.

In July of 2021, Judge C. Carter Williams, of the Twenty-Second Judicial Circuit, was involved in a traffic stop in the town of Moorefield. Court documents show Williams, stopped by a patrolman for having a cell phone in his hand while driving, “identified himself as a judge, contacted the officer’s supervisors, including the Chief of Police and the Mayor, and made coercive and retaliatory comments.”

Initially, the West Virginia Judicial Hearing Board (JHB) concluded Williams’ conduct during the stop warranted a three-month suspension.

This week, the West Virginia’s Supreme Court of Appeals, in a 56 page document, ruled that a six-month suspension, a censure and a $5,000 fine was more appropriate for Williams. This penalty was in line with a recommendation from the Judicial Disciplinary Counsel.

Chief Justice Beth Walker issued an opinion stating, “The failure (of Williams) to acknowledge the wrongful nature of his conduct is a significant factor to consider, and we conclude that it justifies a harsher sanction than that imposed by the JHB.”

The judicial brief cited earlier traffic stops where Williams also identified his position as a judge.